November was a huge month for me in terms of education; over the years I’ve always tried to continue to learn and grow as a photographer, taking online classes and getting out for creative shoots and experimenting with other photographers, but last month I took it to another level by attending not 1, not 2, but THREE workshops, all completely different and in-person (not online). It’s just what I needed at this time of year, when work is finishing up and I’m feeling a little drained artistically. I’ve just gotten back from my last workshop (an in-person 2-day workshop in Toronto), so I’ll be sharing about that one soon, but first I wanted to share my experience at a really fun little class I took early on in the month with Joni Burtt (who did some photos of Dan and I back in January.)

The class was on ‘free-lensing‘: if you haven’t heard of it, it’s basically a neat little trick where you actually physically remove the lens from your camera when you take a shot, creating a really blurry, dream-like look to your images that can’t be achieved in any other way. Joni is a master at this and the photos she takes of her children all have that incredible dream-like quality (see her IG for examples), and although it’s not something that can used all the time, it was super neat to learn something new and add to my bag of ‘tricks’. I’ll definitely be using it for personal work and might even throw some in to my couples sessions. Joni is a great teacher, she made it really easy to understand and it was great to spend an afternoon with other creatives, learning and shooting (you can see some of my attempts in this post). Most of all though, this is what I took away from the class, something she said at the very start of her talk:

“Freelensing makes your images look like how a memory feels.”

Oh, my heart. So true. Less technical mastery, more feeling…this is what I want to work on in 2017.

Oh, LUKE. This sweet, 9lbs bub was probably one of the best newborns I had this year (though it’s so hard to choose, they are all special to me!) He was a sleepy, chunky dream, and it was amazing to see Jenna, Jake and big brother Brock again; these are some good, good people and I’m so happy to see their growing family!

Becky and Brendan are one of those super cute, super smiley and beautiful couples that you just can’t get but like being around. They are also super motivated students, smart (Brendan is a genius according to Becky), and they loooove cats (good thing because my cat followed us for half of the session!) We explored my (and my parents’) backyard on THE most gorgeous Fall evening, they definitely got the best light of the year! I hope that we can get lucky like that again next August for their Sussex wedding 🙂

Oh, this little sweetheart. His parents waited a long time for him (16 years!) and he is so, SO loved. The nicest people you could meet and Logan was such an amazing little guy for his session, slept and slept and slept and smiled and smiled and smiled. The prefect little peanut <3

The newborns are back! After a fairly quiet couple of months, I had a little gang of newborns come visit mien October and I was so happy! I was especially happy to meet this little lady, Alexa, not only because her parents are one of my previous wedding couples (ALWAYS the best), but because I had known about her arrival for a looooong time (like, since Nicole was 2 weeks pregnant knew, lol). All the anticipation was worth it though because she was so sweet, with such crazy little expressions, and was SO loved by mom and dad (and everyone around her), it was awesome to witness. She didn’t want to sleep for me all that easily but we still managed to get some pretty images of her, and I can’t wait to follow along and watch her grow up!